William Bilbo

William N. Bilbo (1815-1867) was a Republican political operative who lobbied for passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.

Biography
William Bilbo was born in Virginia in 1815, and he became a prosperous lawyer in Nashville, Tennessee, where he became a leader of the Know Nothings. He also worked as a journalist and was a landowner in coal country, later selling this land to the Sewanee Mining Company at a profit. During the American Civil War, he was loyal to the Confederacy until 1864, when he suddenly moved north. Via his former Whig colleague William H. Seward, he became a lobbyist for the Republicans, and he was imprisoned as a rebel spy before President Abraham Lincoln ordered his release. He used offers of patronage jobs to sway some Democrats into voting in favor of the Thirteenth Amendment in January 1865, and he died in 1867.